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ORAL HISTORY OF ROBERT (BOB) PEELLE
Interviewed by Keith McDaniel
March 1, 2013
MR. MCDANIEL: This is Keith McDaniel, and today is March 1, 2013, and I am at the home of Bob Peelle here in Oak Ridge. Mr. Peelle thank you for taking time to speak with us.
MR. PEELLE: And Elizabeth Peelle, my wife.
MR. MCDANIEL: And Elizabeth Peelle, absolutely. Absolutely. Let's start at the beginning. Why don't you tell a little bit about where you were born and raised, and your family.
MR. PEELLE: Toledo, Ohio, we had a small family, a brother, 4 years older, who went into municipal government studies and got a master's degree from Ohio State, finally, and he was drafted twice for the Korean War and stuff like that. My father was an order clerk for Cletus Cab Company, which is sort of important, you've got to handle your orders or you can't stay in business. And they gave him a lot of -- he saw every order three times to make sure it was in the right place. My mother was a former school teacher, and when she quit that she taught me stuff.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, that's good.
MR. PEELLE: Well there was, there was plenty of encouragement for education. My dad was a -- I found one of his college grade cards, the old papers, and he might've got a score on something that was below 96.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. PEELLE: Much better than I guess I would. Luckily I didn't have to deal with numerical grades. That was at Wilmington College in Ohio. It's a Quaker school in an area which has many Quakers in it, including him.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now what, what year were you born?
MR. PEELLE: 1929.
MR. MCDANIEL: So '29. So you were just -- you were born coming along right at the end of the Depression, I suppose.
MR. PEELLE: Well, I grew up as the Depression eased --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right. Exactly.
MR. PEELLE: -- but, we had a lot of friends who were in bad shape.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. PEELLE: Family friends. Toledo was hard hit because it depended on auto industry.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: And -- however, the scale company was a great place for my dad to work. He only missed one paycheck. They just didn't pay him one month.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: He never got that. Even when they got rich. But generally is was a good place to work.
MR. MCDANIEL: You -- so you went to college, you said, at Wilmington College?
MR. PEELLE: No, my father did.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. PEELLE: I went to University of Rochester.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, did you?
MR. PEELLE: And I got a scholarship to go there, and left after three years of high school, mostly because I had squeaked out 16 credits, but digging ditches and things.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: And my mother was worried about the war, which had not yet terminated. So I went to school at sixteen years old and was fairly immature.
MR. MCDANIEL: At Rochester?
MR. PEELLE: Rochester.
MR. MCDANIEL: Rochester.
MR. PEELLE: And I graduated from there in physics in 1949.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, did you, did you know that's what you wanted to study when you went to college?
MR. PEELLE: My plan was to go into electrical engineering.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. PEELLE: So my dad and I went up there for me to enter and get a room to stay, and saw Professor Trayhern, I can't remember what he taught, and he said, "Well, one thing you should know is that we've decided to kill the electrical engineering program. And there are still some courses being offered this year. But it won't be a very good place to study that."
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: "But there are lots of other things we teach, including many kinds of engineering, physics, optics, very strong in optics because of Kodak."
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: And, so I said, "Well, I never took any physics in high school, but that'd be a good choice because I know there's some overlap."
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: And that's how I became a physicist.
MR. MCDANIEL: So you graduated with a Bachelors in --
MR. PEELLE: Yes, in science, right.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- in physics -- in science, that's right.
MR. PEELLE: And went to Princeton University for graduate school.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. PEELLE: Luckily. And worked in nuclear physics, which was one of the major things they were working on.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. At that point in time.
MR. PEELLE: And gradu -- well, I left there in 1954 to come here.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. PEELLE: And -- for a couple years, stretched out a little bit.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: I got behind in my work, so I had to stay.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. I understand.
MR. PEELLE: So --
MR. MCDANIEL: So, but you eventually graduated --
MR. PEELLE: I finally got a PhD in 1958. So I was here working on my thesis at night and my day work in the day.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. PEELLE: Got pretty tired.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now you, so you came to Oak Ridge in '54.
MR. PEELLE: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Tell me about getting that job; tell me about who you talked to and what you were going to do, and how that came about.
MR. PEELLE: I don't really remember except there was one other grad student at Princeton who was interested in this job, and he knew the people at Westinghouse, because Westinghouse nuclear reactor spoke with us. I can't remember how. Had to do with one of the Directors of the Laboratory, Bob Sharpey. And, so I can't -- we both interviewed both places --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: -- and somehow or another, he decided to do better in Pittsburgh, and I was perfectly happy to come here. I interviewed in physics with Dr. Snell, now dead, and when I arrived, the place they had space was in the group working on reactor physics, reactor shielding --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. PEELLE: -- under a Mr. Blizzard, Everett Blizzard, who has a dynamic personality. So it developed from there. They changed the name of the division five times but -- so I can't tell you what division I worked in --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. PEELLE: But it was working all the time, almost, on provision of nuclear data that ought to help design reactors.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. PEELLE: And I didn't know __ how to use it, but it was pertinent.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. Exactly, exactly. Let me adjust something real quick here. Alright, there we go. So, so when you came you -- it was, you were working on shielding, in the shielding division.
MR. PEELLE: That's where we were actually working on the gamma rays when uranium 235 fissions.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. Exactly.
MR. PEELLE: And the problem is it makes a lot of other things that produce background. So you have to work at it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right. Now, so how long did you work on that -- in that division, or project?
MR. PEELLE: Well that division changed names --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: -- it was always a lot of the same people --
MR. MCDANIEL: A lot of the same people.
MR. PEELLE: -- up until when I retired in '91 when I was getting sick.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right? So you stayed in that same group. You know --
MR. PEELLE: Well it -- my immediate supervisor didn't changed.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: There were lots of other changes.
MR. MCDANIEL: What was it like working at the Lab?
MR. PEELLE: Well. I thought it was a fine place to work. Which, of course, that depends largely on who you work with.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: If they're reliable and friendly and helpful, it makes it go easy. But we worked like mad. Of course, now they complain about forty percent tax rates, but I think it was fifty-five percent for us --
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. PEELLE: -- in the '50s some place. So -- maybe '60s. Taxes were higher. Didn't deter anybody, everybody was working like mad here.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: We had a guest who was well-known, from a consulting firm in New York. He came down to visit. He would -- they did shielding work also. And the work overlapped. He said, "You guys work awfully hard." We said, "Well, how will we get anything done otherwise?" He said, "Well, you work harder than we do."
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, that's good --
MR. PEELLE: Which I didn't know, because I hadn't been to the other place.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: But I think physicists survive to work hard.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: Even though it's easier than it sounds, it's not real easy.
MR. MCDANIEL: I understand. I understand. Let's -- what were some of the things that you did? I mean, are there any -- any moments in your career that kind of stand out as, as you know, achievements for your group? Or personal achievements, that you feel as far as your professional life?
MR. PEELLE: Well, there were lots of them luckily. But I was never famous.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: I was spared that. Early in my time here, the first year, a few months after I got here, there was an accident. Was one of the worst known accidents at the Lab.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: A -- they were dissolving fuel elements, probably mostly brought in from Hanford. They were very young, in order to produce a lot of lanthanum 140 for Los Alamos; they thought they needed it. And that involved a brew where you dissolve fuel elements and you capture the -- safely capture all the radioactive gasses.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: But it boiled over and all the alarms went off one day.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: So that was exciting.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: And turned out that the problem was, the main road was here, we were here, the wind was blowing that direction. So the cloud -- it was a pretty good wind -- the cloud was just going past the door to the old Oak Ridge pile where --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh is that right?
MR. PEELLE: -- we were working there that day. We looked out and here was this stream of -- it had radio iodine in it, but it was mostly nitric acid from the dissolving, spoiling stuff.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: It was pretty excited. And --
MR. MCDANIEL: Could you see it? Was it something --
MR. PEELLE: Well, in this case, it's a rather brown color.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. PEELLE: And it was not -- we were not in the middle of it, it was several feet away; it was a very quiet stream.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: So we got out of there in a hurry --
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet.
MR. PEELLE: But it was interesting that the problem was they didn't have detectors to know what was going on. They had a lot of detectors on the road here, and the wind was blowing away from that. So sitting down in the road it didn't look very serious.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: Sitting up here on the hill, they're pretty -- they're pretty bad.
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet.
MR. PEELLE: In fact, probably nobody was badly hurt by it. But it was, it was exciting.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. PEELLE: And of course, we wrote letters and people frowned and --
MR. MCDANIEL: Of course, I'm sure.
MR. PEELLE: But they did, in the course of the next year, get some detector stations, where they could respond to something like that in a control room that was safe. And that was a good response. Never happened again. Well the projects went slowly, but successful --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: -- in most cases. And, so, I ended up with a very good group, working at the ORELA: Oak Ridge Electron Linear Accelerator, which is the electron accelerator, not to get the electrons, but the pulses of electrons of a hundred and some megavolts were bashed into a target and neutrons were pulsed.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. PEELLE: And so, a few nanosecond worth of neutrons, and that -- light travels this far a nanosecond. So it's a time that can be measured and thought about, and that measure -- sitting back far away, you can measure the edge of the neutron; if they're going slower it takes longer.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: So we did a lot of experiments like that. The machine, last I heard, still works.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. PEELLE: But I left in '91. And the main funders quit. But we had more years of support than most places. And it was then jointly between the Physics Division, and while I was there are that time called the Engineering, Physics, and Mathematics Division. No math for me, but that became a group of computing experts in the end.
MR. MCDANIEL: Did you have a -- was there a time where you were working, you spent several years on a project and you were almost there, and you just got the funding pulled out from under you?
MR. PEELLE: Yes, but --
MR. MCDANIEL: Because I've talked to several people that that happened to --
MR. PEELLE: Oh, it's very common, if you have a slow project.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: You can't do something big -- most people can't do something big in a short time. In fact, the first project I was on, we got the data for that spectrum of gamma rays from fission by about 1960 and had to pay for the international meeting in Vienna, but we never got the publication done. Funding was cut off for many people at the Labs the same time, actually, because of the demise of the aircraft nuclear propulsion program, which you've heard of. And of course, that was reasonable because the reason for having a nuclear reactor in an aircraft had to be pretty dire or you wouldn't even try. In the Navy, it would have worked, but it's a stretch. But we learned a lot in the process.
MR. MCDANIEL: And that was a huge project, wasn't it?
MR. PEELLE: Yes, many people got fired by governors who needed money.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: But many years later, I can't tell you when, maybe 1980, Los Alamos group came along and said, "Why didn't you guys finish?" And we told them why. They said, "Well, we can spare a few dollars to help you finish it up." So it got finished.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. PEELLE: And published properly.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: And, well, we fixed some of the answers, but we were about right in our first analysis.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, so you said you retired in ninety --
MR. PEELLE: One.
MR. MCDANIEL: '91. Because you were getting sick.
MR. PEELLE: Yes. My liver was giving up.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right. Now, I know you and your wife both were very active in the community. I mean --
MR. PEELLE: We didn't mention Elizabeth. I married her in 1955.
MR. MCDANIEL: I was going to ask -- I was going to get to that. So did you meet her here?
MR. PEELLE: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, so tell me about -- tell me -- so you came in '54. You met her here. Was she here working?
MR. PEELLE: No, she worked at K-25 in the lab.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh okay. Okay.
MR. PEELLE: And we had a mutual acquaintance, Joni Livingston, the wife of Bob Livingston, who was a Division Director in Physics or someplace at that time. So later we got married.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right. The -- but you and your wife were very active in the community. Were you -- you know, you were involved in politics; you were involved in social issues. I know that, and I want to talk about some of those things. But where did that come from? Was that something you were raised to do? Or --
MR. PEELLE: Oh, most surely. But, well, everybody knows that race relations were not all that great in the North, but they were a little calmer than this area.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: Oak Ridge had people from everywhere: North, South, East, West. But then the blacks who lived here in that 1954 era had very few privileges. They couldn't go to the movies, they couldn't wash their clothes at the laundromat. Most of them had a job, which had a long line to get out of the way within the working day. And most of the white people doing a similar occupation were concentrated in a different locker room and got out more quickly. There were just many things that weren't right. And we became aware of that through the church, through the fact that the Supreme Court was thinking about those things. And we helped form a group. Many groups were formed around. Ours was called the Oak Ridge Community Relations Council. And we, together with a few dozen others from the area, got to work on what we could do to eliminate those problems.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: In the meanwhile, the Clinton High School was burned down, there were riots over there, from an outside ass.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: If you wish. And so there was plenty to do. And our first big efforts were to call for the government to maintain law and order. Which, nowadays we'd sound real conservative and would've been then, but it was considered radical, I think that's fair to say, by some. Many people in Oak Ridge were not big haters of anybody. But there were a few who were happy with the way things were. And the -- at first, the administration of the compound, which was not quite out of government control yet --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. PEELLE: -- and they did integrate the high school. But not the junior high or anything else. Those came along a few years later. And we were in nine of the groups -- my wife and I were in nine of the groups that helped disaster. Dozens of people in town were working on this.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: But, so I played a minor role. And that was pretty interesting.
MR. MCDANIEL: But there were other --
MR. PEELLE: Oh yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- you know, there were other issues for integration, I mean, businesses and things such as that you and the group worked on --
MR. PEELLE: Well, we -- I remember one year, I was program chairman, and the topics were chosen from a list of problem areas in Oak Ridge. So every speaker who was invited should have known he represented a problem.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MR. PEELLE: Which was sort of mean. Some of them did very well, some of them exposed a problem.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. Exactly.
MR. PEELLE: But there was one step we had to learn. My wife got involved in developing a history of what was going on and for covering only a few years of this time, many of which we were not here. So she convened a series of meetings of people we knew had been involved in whatever was going on. And it also had a name; it was a subcommittee of the --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: And so every week we'd have a Garden Apartment, so-called, now Rolling Hills, full of all kinds of people we'd never met before. And they had wonderful stories. And as you know, the way this works, you get several people that were involved in something that trigger each other's memories so it comes pouring out. Whereas they wouldn't think of it by themselves. And -- so we did some history projects, and she had written that up and it's been at the library for a number of years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. Sure, sure. I was going to get to that.
MR. PEELLE: We got to -- from that, we got into Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning. They were going to build another road over the Smokies. And we thought that was -- if they built enough roads, they could totally destroy it. Because you can fill any number of roads on nice scenery like that. So a number of Oak Ridgers, dozens, got involved in the hearing on that and decided to form an organization, which is still active; it's been very important in the state.
MR. MCDANIEL: Let's go back to the race relations just a little bit.
MR. PEELLE: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: You were involved in the CRC Barbershop Committee.
MR. PEELLE: Yes, that was one committee.
MR. MCDANIEL: Tell me -- tell me about that. Tell me --
MR. PEELLE: Well, the problem was that if a black person, or a person thought to be black, needed a haircut, they had to go to Knoxville or learn to cut their own.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really?
MR. PEELLE: Most did the latter. But some went to Knoxville, and -- or cut each other's hair.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: So it was a hindrance.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: And would it be embarrassing if we had guests like that. So, to be sure we knew what we were doing, we had to go test. So several blacks and whites and in-betweens agreed to go in couples to all the barbershops to see what happened. And occasionally, somebody got their haircut. But mostly nobody did. And it wasn't they hadn't even asked about it, they usually said "We don't cut--"
MR. MCDANIEL: That's just the way it was.
MR. PEELLE: "We can't cut a black person's hair."
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: Well, maybe it took an hour to learn how, but they couldn't do it. And I went with a man who worked for the City and was the head custodian for what was then the Civic Center, called the -- had a green room and a small library, down in Jackson Square area. And he was a very refined person. Always neat as could be. He must have trimmed his hair twice a week. I mean, just personal attention, he was it. Mr. Bucker, who's long dead. So he and I went to a couple shops. And it was sort of interesting because it would be his turn, there's a bunch of people standing around, and he would walk up to the barber and say, "I just need a little trim over here." Nobody could see anything wrong with his hair, but he probably was ready to trim it. And they'd say, "No." I'd go up, we'd say "We're sorry. Thought there was a mistake." And we'd try other things, like leaving cards at various stores and laundromats saying, “We would support your allowing a range of customers.” So, eventually that led to a whole bunch of things. Beth was deeply involved in that. I was peripherally involved.
MR. MCDANIEL: But that led to bringing a black barber into town, wasn't it?
MR. PEELLE: No, but a man who was perfectly willing to cut black person's hair.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: And it was the brother of a woman who was part of the group --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. PEELLE: -- and Ken was it?
MR. MCDANIEL: Ken, Ken.
MR. PEELLE: Ken's Barbershop.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right.
MR. PEELLE: Ken is retired now.
MR. MCDANIEL: But they brought him in -- you brought him in with kind of a guarantee that he'd have so many months of business, right?
MR. PEELLE: We sold tickets ahead of time. So you could go in and -- once you had a ticket you could go in and get it whenever you wanted it, and how many tickets were sold I can't remember
ELIZABETH PEELLE: Two hundred seventy-five in one month.
MR. MCDANIEL: Two hundred and seventy-five in one month.
MR. PEELLE: Tickets? They could be used anytime.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. PEELLE: And some people bought ten, or whatever.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: So that introduced him a good start, a good place, and he has __ put on more barbers. Now, not many blacks came. They were all ___ because all the people who lived here had learned to cut their own hair already and were fine. But there were people, and there still are a few who go there. But we were sure pleased to see that problem reduced. The laundromat was a bigger problem.
MR. MCDANIEL: Was it?
MR. PEELLE: All this can be found various places, but that's not completely recorded. We were not involved as deeply as others. But the laundromat that was in above Jefferson Circle, which was convenient for many people, the guy really didn't like the idea of a black person's clothes being washed. And there's wonderful stories, some of which you've seen written down, but it's not in the library yet.
ELIZABETH PEELLE: *talking in background*
MR. PEELLE: Oh yeah, it ended up -- someone came in for a test and got their wash started. So the proprietor was so angry, he took all the clothes from everybody's washing machines.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. PEELLE: Everybody was there, and they weren't all black. Half and half. Threw them all out on the sidewalk.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. PEELLE: And they had to go sorting too. So that was a case of a bad reputation. Because that wasn't nice.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. I had heard once that that was where the Klan came from out in the County to come wash their robes at that --
MR. PEELLE: There was a Klan rally. I don't know where they were all from. Now, predominately not Oak Ridgers.
MR. MCDANIEL: But they -- right--
MR. PEELLE: And they had a rally one evening. I sat on the hill with my young daughter and Elizabeth -- my wife, Elizabeth, went down there looking around. There were a few, you know, Klan robes and things.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: I can't tell you what happened but, nothing -- I mean, there were speeches and stuff. And after an hour or two they went home. But it was not a violent thing in any way. But I'm sure the police were watching. In those days --
MR. MCDANIEL: Where was that held? Where were they?
MR. PEELLE: At the
ELIZABETH PEELLE: *talking in background* up Jefferson Street to the--
MR. PEELLE: It wasn't right in front. It was down the hill, wasn't it?
ELIZABETH PEELLE: We marched --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
ELIZABETH PEELLE: -- after talking with the police, we marched on one side of the road on the Turnpike up to the intersection and back. And the Klan was on the other side of the road.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. PEELLE: People expressed their opinions.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. PEELLE: It was taken care of.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, what are some of the other activities, social and political activities that you got involved with?
MR. PEELLE: Well, the main one is the involvement with Roane County politics.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Talk about that a little bit.
MR. PEELLE: In 1970, roughly, '69, this area -- I got the wrong date. This area where we're sitting, Oklahoma Avenue, was developed mostly in 1960. We moved here in '64 from the Garden Apartments. And there were several lots unbuilt. Nebraska Avenue area was also being built. So the population of Roane County Oak Ridgers went from two to a few hundred --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh okay.
MR. PEELLE: -- in a fairly short time. And for that reason, there was a -- there were several problems. These houses were appraised reasonably correctly for tax purposes. Whereas, most of the areas of the county, it was a hundred dollars an acre or something.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: Which seemed a little bit off. You couldn't buy that land for anything like that. And this was a general problem. Other new areas of the county were similar, but there weren't so many new areas. So it stuck like a sore thumb. Anyhow, this required the money that went to Roane County for schools from sales tax, for instance, had to be transferred to the City. The treasurer, or trustee, of Roane County refused. He said, "I'm not going to do that. They don't deserve it. It's only two million dollars, or whatever." And the City had this suit to get the money.
MR. MCDANIEL: The City of Oak Ridge?
MR. PEELLE: The City of Oak Ridge had a suit. And that got a lot of attention. And the appraisal problem got lots of attention. So we helped form a little group called Roane Ridgers, and we met at various places and tried to hear Roane County officials tell us why the appraisals had to be that way. Why, it was impossible. And the state was working on this problem elsewhere, not just here. And at about that time the first appraisal law was passed, which required an effort to get everything comparable and keep it up to date. It's still in effect. In fact, they've improved. Well, that got a lot of people in this area interested. At the same time, and for probably the same reason, in all of Roane County, Harriman, Rockwood, there was discontent with county government.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. PEELLE: Partly because it wasn't being done very well. The county judge was sick. He had once been - Frank Qualls, had once been a fine man apparently, but he had too much alcohol. And that was unpleasant. And so there was a county-wide organization, the name of which I do not recall, which said, "Let's get together and elect some commissioners who'll do something." At that time there was justices of peace, the same job, mostly the same job. Anyhow, they met to set the tax rate, so forth. So, in the effort to find candidates county-wide, there were a number of people in this group, which didn't really include me significantly at the beginning, but they looked around and they nabbed me and said, "Why don't you run for County Commissioner?" And at that point it was pretty interesting, so I said, "I can learn that."
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: I've got six months to learn it. And I did, went to meetings and I memorized -- the County was thinking about a new courthouse, and the architect, or the guy who had sold the idea, was a man named Martin Lyde. Now --
MR. MCDANIEL: Now what year -- now what year was that?
MR. PEELLE: Well, I think it was about 19 --
MR. MCDANIEL: Was it in the '60s?
MR. PEELLE: -- about 1970. I was first elected in '72.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. PEELLE: So it was just before I was elected. I started to follow it. And, well I thought it was a jail. He was going to build a jail. He don't want to build a courthouse. So it was probably '72. And Martin Lyde, who could draw a floor plan and did all this himself, he was in a meeting and there was a big discussion on the jail. And I learned a lot because I knew so little. I was standing next to him, so I had learned that he was the presumed architect. So I made the comment at break, "Well, it must take a lot of know-how to properly design a jail. No, no, no, you just..." And that's the kind of jail we had.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. Exactly.
MR. PEELLE: But he did get it done. And we had a good contractor who could correct the errors, so that the roof didn't fall in or anything. So anyhow, I got interested in the County. I ran for office. I think I knocked on every door of the precinct, which was only four hundred at that time. Now it would be harder. And had a large group of people helping me, one on every block. So it was actually -- I didn't know all these people, of course.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now was this -- you were elected by precinct and not at-large?
MR. PEELLE: The precinct.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, precinct.
MR. PEELLE: It turned out the precinct, at first, was the electoral district.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. PEELLE: It was the Sixth District, or something.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: So all the rest of the counties divided up into -- there were twenty-seven members.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. PEELLE: That was too many. But I was one of them. And the old courthouse with a big steel bar to keep the walls from falling in. You may remember that. We could hardly see each other, it was so big a room. But anyhow, that's where I started.
MR. MCDANIEL: That's where you started.
MR. PEELLE: And this went on for twenty-two years. But -- five elections. But they were not all contested; two of three of them were easy. And, but then there was a district that included Oliver Springs, Orchard View --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. PEELLE: -- and there were two and a fifteen member coalition. Fifteen is a good number. Not so small that somebody can get that low on the team and be the top all in one evening, not so large you can't even know the guys.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. PEELLE: So I worked with that, and after the first couple terms when people would speak to me and so forth, I had a really good time.
MR. MCDANIEL: You know, I guess from what I remember is that they kind of -- kind of considered you the outsider, didn't they?
MR. PEELLE: At first.
MR. MCDANIEL: At first?
MR. PEELLE: Very definitely.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah.
MR. PEELLE: Well it's this mentality where our treasurer, Roane County treasurer, wouldn't send money to Oak Ridge. So that's the only reason I didn't belong. I remember one guy who got mad at me for something, and said, "You ought to go back to your -- and get out of Roane County." But I lived in Roane County.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. As far as they were concerned, Roane County stopped at the river, wasn't it?
MR. PEELLE: Yes. And then -- so Oak Ridge piled on by annexing a little slip across the river, and it really got the County people upset. Because the hearing of whether that thing could be annexed was held in Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: And no Oak Ridger, at that time, lived there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. PEELLE: And several -- and nearby there were some nice people.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: And they were offended. And the City Manager at that time, I think, was Lyle Lacey. And I remember going down and I had to see him for something else. And I said, "Well, you know, this problem was made worse, this problem with neighbors working together, when we held the hearing in Oak Ridge for land across the river." And he said, "Oh." They pinned a little lower on his bulletin board over Roane County.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh really? What other things were you involved in, in activism --
MR. PEELLE: Well, Roane County was the big thing, until I got sick, really.
MR. MCDANIEL: Were there big issues that you faced there? I mean, were there big fights you had over -- between, you know, the Oak Ridge part of Roane County and the rest of the County?
MR. PEELLE: No. I could do nothing that benefitted only Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: But I could find lots of things that would help Oak Ridge, Harriman, Rockwood, etc.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Sure.
MR. PEELLE: And Kingston. So it was a very good group, we had a majority of people who were trying, and not all from the Lab. There were a few from the Lab who'd actively stand. And it was a very fine arrangement. One thing I learned, which I already could've guessed, from a County -- small County like this, fifty thousand or less people, it should be nonparty. Because I got most of the people on the Commission who were Republicans. And I was, at that time, on the Democratic executive committee. Not very active, but I was.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: And there was a lot of banter and they would kid me about things, but no problem at all working together. Because there was almost nothing that we dealt with that was really a partisan issue. And to inject caucus or something on top of that would have been nonsense. We got along fine. And in Knoxville, at that time, at least, they had a Democratic caucus, a Republican nonsense. Because you can go find the guy and talk to him. So I learned the value of nonparty politics. Most of the heads, people like the County executive and so forth that kept changing the names were Republicans, but that didn't matter. So we had a high presence. I just noticed in my follow-up, when I resigned, one of nice plaque signed by Ken Yager, who was the executive at that time, United States Senator. So it was a good group to work with, and we got a lot done. I'm not sure that that can be duplicated. As far as I was concerned, after the first few years I had no problems.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. PEELLE: And that doesn't mean there was no friction.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: But there was, I think, a real -- oh, I should say, we were two -- we had two commissioners. The other fella was Terry Hacker from Oliver Springs, who was a very well-known ___ throughout the County, and loved and regarded. So that made life easier. And he got more votes in Oak Ridge than I did one year. He came famed here.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. PEELLE: He was a really good guy, then died too young. So after the liver transplant, I feebly worked. Did my County job and voted that I never had the zip because I was in heavy therapy.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Now you said you had your liver transplant in --
MR. PEELLE: The transplant was in 1992.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, '92, right.
MR. PEELLE: Late '92. And until I worked as a consultant for 9 months, I was pretty healthy, until the last dropped down -- it's -- I was lucky to get out of it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: After that, after I recovered enough to do things, I got involved in the public oversight of what DOE was doing about reclamation in the area. And there were at least two or three organizations concerned with this. I was an early member of the so-called Site Specific Advisory Board, and chairman for a year, I think, Vice Chairman once. And we were new at it, and I think it's become more polished more recently. But one good thing we had, the state said, "We're trying to reclaim this area, or stabilize it, at least, from contamination. And it depends how you're going to use this land and what the public would accept. And we don't have any way of doing that." This was Mr. Lemming, who was the head of the state organization on Emory Valley Road. And we looked at each other and said, "Yeah, we ought to have one." So we had a group, they hired a Doug Sarno, nationally known, who was very good in the sense that he could hear a discussion and figure out what we meant to do, and find their words, and help write the report. And we performed what was called the End Use Committee and produced results, which, and the way we could do this at SSAB was they were helping support, which was a local committee, and some other groups. But each recommendation was just signed by whoever agreed.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. PEELLE: So here we had two dozen people meeting, usually a dozen guests, on television, and eight people would sign it. But nobody -- people could object. And once or twice they did. But not much. A number of people had hoped, and everyone would like it, but we had hoped to get a complete signed list, so then it was back to where it was.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: We were able to prove -- Al Brooks, who recently died, was a major factor there. We were able to prove that there's no way that anybody could afford that. That decision had been made by summing things up. Maybe there could have been more care. That's one big problem we had. There wasn't enough monitoring during the time it was being contaminated. But nevertheless, we could figure out how to make it useful for something and roughly what it would cost and what was worth doing. We made some judgments, which have pretty much stuck.
MR. MCDANIEL: Have they?
MR. PEELLE: They didn't disagree with -- "they" being DOE didn't badly disagree with it and they had some support, they didn't pour them down our throats, they indicated options. But usually the complete clean out and vegetation perfectly, it's just basically impossible. But we could have the top ten feet okay. And you could -- or some cases, you can work here and play here, as long as it's only ten hours a week.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: One of the things that still bother me is various land classifications. Clean, contaminated. And then there are some others including recreational use, which sounds like it's a good place to play. Well, maybe it is, but what that really means is you should only spend so many hours a week using it. Which is a serious mildly restricted area. And you probably shouldn't sit on the ground to have a picnic.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. PEELLE: But because when they -- the hot spots turned out are sometimes -- this room has got some hot spots. Here's clean, there's dirty --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. PEELLE: -- there's a spot. Yeah. People just built some stuff.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. PEELLE: So a lot of going over all these areas, and that was a hard and useful job.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: That led into a stewardship committee, which is just as hard. Which produced a couple reports, which I think -- I hope are still being used. When this place is made usable as it can, there's still going to be a problem of keeping track. And who is going to be here to keep track? DOE may not be here. And so you've got to have records. Well, I think we succeeded, mostly because of the efforts of Al Brooks to get the tax -- the property appraiser’s maps to show areas that are contaminated. Now they're not publicly owned. But in two days, this area can be given to some organization.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. PEELLE: It happens around here.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: Things happen quickly --
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. PEELLE: -- when the Congress considers them. So there have to be records that are not in the courthouse or the DOE. And there are examples a lot, for instance, where was it? One of the big areas out west, Rocky Flats, they finished that job pretty well. And they put all the records in a boxcar and sent them to Pittsburgh or someplace, where you can't find what you want. So people who live around there --
MR. MCDANIEL: They can't find it.
MR. PEELLE: -- they can find the old records to the extent that people have been working on this for years, but details are lost.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: Now there, it may be simpler, the area that was contaminated is probably known. But, so that's the stewardship problem. Right now it's okay, but as long as we've got a project going, somebody can know what's going on. Every year they put out a report that says where we are, and it's a pretty good report usually. Excellent. The guy who does that is skilled. But when they have to leave, will we know enough? Will Oak Ridge know enough?
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. PEELLE: And if it becomes a private industry, will they remember that they're not supposed to go more than ten feet deep.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. Exactly.
MR. PEELLE: And they won't see anything. So there's a danger. And we did not, as far as I know, since I haven't been active for a few years, I think the efforts of stewardship have now assured that the agreements under which land is released make it very clear what has to happen.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. PEELLE: And the information is available, but there's not a mandatory --
MR. MCDANIEL: There's not a -- there's not really an oversight --
MR. PEELLE: Not a strong one.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. PEELLE: Now, the state could go look at it and start over again, but it's -- and of course, we have our own state office now, full life of the project. So fifty years down the line, it'll be nice if people, when they get a deed, know what they have to do. Stay away from that corner, don't dig there, don't use well water, etcetera.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. PEELLE: And it's worked on, but it's hard to get people to agree to do anything forever. And eventually this thing will be done by the County or something. So it's got to be -- the big points have to be known. So that -- during the time I was on the commission, since most of this stuff is in Roane County, I took it as part of my job to watch over these things. So after there was a public meeting on something with two people present, I was probably one of them. And I would -- if nobody else did it, I would write up a comment. But, and that was a lot of work, but I did -- I continued that part of it when I was no longer the representative. And that's how I got into this and stayed there, until a few years ago, got too hard. But there still is a group, I believe, and they still do good stuff. One of the good things they do is very successful, I think, making education packets. So it's easy for a high school teacher to put a unit in the curriculum.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. PEELLE: And stuff's all ready. And where are they going to get this box dropped on them with all the stuff they need? And that's a potentially very good thing. This'll never work unless a few people in town know about it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Exactly.
MR. PEELLE: So that's most of my life, except working. And I worked a lot.
MR. MCDANIEL: What -- yeah, what were, and I'm sure you talked about this, but what -- if you had to pick out two or three really highlights of your life in Oak Ridge, what would those be?
MR. PEELLE: Well, it's spread over twenty years, but the Roane County thing is probably the biggest. And the --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. That was the thing you were most invested in, wasn't it? As far as for the community goes.
MR. PEELLE: Well, it -- the pleasure was deeper, perhaps, because we could see that what we were doing did actually help people. And people -- I got very little bitterness.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really?
MR. PEELLE: And very little people who don't like politicians, they treated me very well. I remember one fellow out in the v=county who I met, actually at a garden meeting, a club, which meant a flower club, which met in Dyllis area to keep track of who's in the hospital and send flowers. Well I was invited to one of their picnics and sat down next to a lady who'd come from Texas and lived near Dyllis school. And she was complaining about the tax rate. "Oh, the taxes are terrible here. Blah, blah, blah." She was from Texas and things were different where she was. At the end, she said, "My daughter graduated from high school this year," she said with a smile. And she said, "Well, I hope she got a good education." I said, "You know, those are linked. The tax problem and the good education." She said, "Yes, I know."
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
MR. PEELLE: So, she was calm about it. And she understood.
MR. MCDANIEL: She understood. She just wanted to complain about it a little bit, didn't she?
MR. PEELLE: This district, including Oliver Springs, was easier. They did not complain about educational expenses. Even the areas where there weren't many educated people wanted it to be a better education. I'm not sure that's true over the County, although in other places as well. Kingston has a lot of people like that. But when we had a town meeting, so to speak, what did we want to do about fixing up schools? Do we want to close Oliver Springs, everybody go to Kingston?
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: There's always a big push for a consolidated high school, because you can imagine this huge thing with four thousand students and you can have courses on underwater basket weaving or whatever, because there's so many students. But the problem is that if you had to go travel from Kingston -- Oliver Springs to Kingston and home every day, A. you spend a lot of time on the bus, and B. there is absolutely no community involvement.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Exactly.
MR. PEELLE: And Oliver Springs had pretty high community involvement. In fact, you've over there on a summer morning, at least when I did a few times to see somebody, the area of the high school was covered with people: kids practicing, playing ball, people practicing band, all sorts of things.
MR. MCDANIEL: We're about through.
MR. PEELLE: So, it was a center of activity.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: And that's an important function, in a small town especially.
MR. MCDANIEL: And you know, I guess a lot of these little high schools have produced some folks. I just saw -- I remember I was reading an article the other day about Nancy -- Nancy Ann--
MR. PEELLE: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, yeah.
MR. PEELLE: Yeah, she's been a winner all her life.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, yeah. She graduated from Rockwood.
MR. PEELLE: From Rockwood and UT.
MR. MCDANIEL: Went to Roane -- yeah.
MR. PEELLE: And with as high honors as they have.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: It helped better than on TennCare. Helped Obama on ObamaCare. And I hate to see her leave. I always had fun with our representatives looking forward to the letter. If you are confused about how this will affect our area, call Nancy Ann. Who I barely know, I met her. Because she knows the answer.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MR. PEELLE: And that proves that if you work at it and are skilled enough, you can go to school anywhere. But it's easier if you have a good school.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
MR. PEELLE: The Rockwood School was not the greatest. But she learned.
MR. MCDANIEL: She learned. She did. Well, Bob, I appreciate you taking -- well, the phone rang. I appreciate you taking time to talk with us. Is there anything else you want to talk about?
MR. PEELLE: No. It's a fine place to live, though.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you so much, I appreciate it.
MR. PEELLE: Good to have you.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. Great. That was great.
[END OF INTERVIEW]

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ORAL HISTORY OF ROBERT (BOB) PEELLE
Interviewed by Keith McDaniel
March 1, 2013
MR. MCDANIEL: This is Keith McDaniel, and today is March 1, 2013, and I am at the home of Bob Peelle here in Oak Ridge. Mr. Peelle thank you for taking time to speak with us.
MR. PEELLE: And Elizabeth Peelle, my wife.
MR. MCDANIEL: And Elizabeth Peelle, absolutely. Absolutely. Let's start at the beginning. Why don't you tell a little bit about where you were born and raised, and your family.
MR. PEELLE: Toledo, Ohio, we had a small family, a brother, 4 years older, who went into municipal government studies and got a master's degree from Ohio State, finally, and he was drafted twice for the Korean War and stuff like that. My father was an order clerk for Cletus Cab Company, which is sort of important, you've got to handle your orders or you can't stay in business. And they gave him a lot of -- he saw every order three times to make sure it was in the right place. My mother was a former school teacher, and when she quit that she taught me stuff.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, that's good.
MR. PEELLE: Well there was, there was plenty of encouragement for education. My dad was a -- I found one of his college grade cards, the old papers, and he might've got a score on something that was below 96.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. PEELLE: Much better than I guess I would. Luckily I didn't have to deal with numerical grades. That was at Wilmington College in Ohio. It's a Quaker school in an area which has many Quakers in it, including him.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now what, what year were you born?
MR. PEELLE: 1929.
MR. MCDANIEL: So '29. So you were just -- you were born coming along right at the end of the Depression, I suppose.
MR. PEELLE: Well, I grew up as the Depression eased --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right. Exactly.
MR. PEELLE: -- but, we had a lot of friends who were in bad shape.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. PEELLE: Family friends. Toledo was hard hit because it depended on auto industry.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: And -- however, the scale company was a great place for my dad to work. He only missed one paycheck. They just didn't pay him one month.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: He never got that. Even when they got rich. But generally is was a good place to work.
MR. MCDANIEL: You -- so you went to college, you said, at Wilmington College?
MR. PEELLE: No, my father did.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. PEELLE: I went to University of Rochester.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, did you?
MR. PEELLE: And I got a scholarship to go there, and left after three years of high school, mostly because I had squeaked out 16 credits, but digging ditches and things.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: And my mother was worried about the war, which had not yet terminated. So I went to school at sixteen years old and was fairly immature.
MR. MCDANIEL: At Rochester?
MR. PEELLE: Rochester.
MR. MCDANIEL: Rochester.
MR. PEELLE: And I graduated from there in physics in 1949.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, did you, did you know that's what you wanted to study when you went to college?
MR. PEELLE: My plan was to go into electrical engineering.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. PEELLE: So my dad and I went up there for me to enter and get a room to stay, and saw Professor Trayhern, I can't remember what he taught, and he said, "Well, one thing you should know is that we've decided to kill the electrical engineering program. And there are still some courses being offered this year. But it won't be a very good place to study that."
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: "But there are lots of other things we teach, including many kinds of engineering, physics, optics, very strong in optics because of Kodak."
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: And, so I said, "Well, I never took any physics in high school, but that'd be a good choice because I know there's some overlap."
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: And that's how I became a physicist.
MR. MCDANIEL: So you graduated with a Bachelors in --
MR. PEELLE: Yes, in science, right.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- in physics -- in science, that's right.
MR. PEELLE: And went to Princeton University for graduate school.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. PEELLE: Luckily. And worked in nuclear physics, which was one of the major things they were working on.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. At that point in time.
MR. PEELLE: And gradu -- well, I left there in 1954 to come here.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. PEELLE: And -- for a couple years, stretched out a little bit.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: I got behind in my work, so I had to stay.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. I understand.
MR. PEELLE: So --
MR. MCDANIEL: So, but you eventually graduated --
MR. PEELLE: I finally got a PhD in 1958. So I was here working on my thesis at night and my day work in the day.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. PEELLE: Got pretty tired.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now you, so you came to Oak Ridge in '54.
MR. PEELLE: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Tell me about getting that job; tell me about who you talked to and what you were going to do, and how that came about.
MR. PEELLE: I don't really remember except there was one other grad student at Princeton who was interested in this job, and he knew the people at Westinghouse, because Westinghouse nuclear reactor spoke with us. I can't remember how. Had to do with one of the Directors of the Laboratory, Bob Sharpey. And, so I can't -- we both interviewed both places --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: -- and somehow or another, he decided to do better in Pittsburgh, and I was perfectly happy to come here. I interviewed in physics with Dr. Snell, now dead, and when I arrived, the place they had space was in the group working on reactor physics, reactor shielding --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. PEELLE: -- under a Mr. Blizzard, Everett Blizzard, who has a dynamic personality. So it developed from there. They changed the name of the division five times but -- so I can't tell you what division I worked in --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. PEELLE: But it was working all the time, almost, on provision of nuclear data that ought to help design reactors.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. PEELLE: And I didn't know __ how to use it, but it was pertinent.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. Exactly, exactly. Let me adjust something real quick here. Alright, there we go. So, so when you came you -- it was, you were working on shielding, in the shielding division.
MR. PEELLE: That's where we were actually working on the gamma rays when uranium 235 fissions.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. Exactly.
MR. PEELLE: And the problem is it makes a lot of other things that produce background. So you have to work at it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right. Now, so how long did you work on that -- in that division, or project?
MR. PEELLE: Well that division changed names --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: -- it was always a lot of the same people --
MR. MCDANIEL: A lot of the same people.
MR. PEELLE: -- up until when I retired in '91 when I was getting sick.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right? So you stayed in that same group. You know --
MR. PEELLE: Well it -- my immediate supervisor didn't changed.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: There were lots of other changes.
MR. MCDANIEL: What was it like working at the Lab?
MR. PEELLE: Well. I thought it was a fine place to work. Which, of course, that depends largely on who you work with.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: If they're reliable and friendly and helpful, it makes it go easy. But we worked like mad. Of course, now they complain about forty percent tax rates, but I think it was fifty-five percent for us --
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. PEELLE: -- in the '50s some place. So -- maybe '60s. Taxes were higher. Didn't deter anybody, everybody was working like mad here.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: We had a guest who was well-known, from a consulting firm in New York. He came down to visit. He would -- they did shielding work also. And the work overlapped. He said, "You guys work awfully hard." We said, "Well, how will we get anything done otherwise?" He said, "Well, you work harder than we do."
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, that's good --
MR. PEELLE: Which I didn't know, because I hadn't been to the other place.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: But I think physicists survive to work hard.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: Even though it's easier than it sounds, it's not real easy.
MR. MCDANIEL: I understand. I understand. Let's -- what were some of the things that you did? I mean, are there any -- any moments in your career that kind of stand out as, as you know, achievements for your group? Or personal achievements, that you feel as far as your professional life?
MR. PEELLE: Well, there were lots of them luckily. But I was never famous.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: I was spared that. Early in my time here, the first year, a few months after I got here, there was an accident. Was one of the worst known accidents at the Lab.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: A -- they were dissolving fuel elements, probably mostly brought in from Hanford. They were very young, in order to produce a lot of lanthanum 140 for Los Alamos; they thought they needed it. And that involved a brew where you dissolve fuel elements and you capture the -- safely capture all the radioactive gasses.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: But it boiled over and all the alarms went off one day.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: So that was exciting.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: And turned out that the problem was, the main road was here, we were here, the wind was blowing that direction. So the cloud -- it was a pretty good wind -- the cloud was just going past the door to the old Oak Ridge pile where --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh is that right?
MR. PEELLE: -- we were working there that day. We looked out and here was this stream of -- it had radio iodine in it, but it was mostly nitric acid from the dissolving, spoiling stuff.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: It was pretty excited. And --
MR. MCDANIEL: Could you see it? Was it something --
MR. PEELLE: Well, in this case, it's a rather brown color.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. PEELLE: And it was not -- we were not in the middle of it, it was several feet away; it was a very quiet stream.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: So we got out of there in a hurry --
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet.
MR. PEELLE: But it was interesting that the problem was they didn't have detectors to know what was going on. They had a lot of detectors on the road here, and the wind was blowing away from that. So sitting down in the road it didn't look very serious.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: Sitting up here on the hill, they're pretty -- they're pretty bad.
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet.
MR. PEELLE: In fact, probably nobody was badly hurt by it. But it was, it was exciting.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. PEELLE: And of course, we wrote letters and people frowned and --
MR. MCDANIEL: Of course, I'm sure.
MR. PEELLE: But they did, in the course of the next year, get some detector stations, where they could respond to something like that in a control room that was safe. And that was a good response. Never happened again. Well the projects went slowly, but successful --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: -- in most cases. And, so, I ended up with a very good group, working at the ORELA: Oak Ridge Electron Linear Accelerator, which is the electron accelerator, not to get the electrons, but the pulses of electrons of a hundred and some megavolts were bashed into a target and neutrons were pulsed.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. PEELLE: And so, a few nanosecond worth of neutrons, and that -- light travels this far a nanosecond. So it's a time that can be measured and thought about, and that measure -- sitting back far away, you can measure the edge of the neutron; if they're going slower it takes longer.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: So we did a lot of experiments like that. The machine, last I heard, still works.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. PEELLE: But I left in '91. And the main funders quit. But we had more years of support than most places. And it was then jointly between the Physics Division, and while I was there are that time called the Engineering, Physics, and Mathematics Division. No math for me, but that became a group of computing experts in the end.
MR. MCDANIEL: Did you have a -- was there a time where you were working, you spent several years on a project and you were almost there, and you just got the funding pulled out from under you?
MR. PEELLE: Yes, but --
MR. MCDANIEL: Because I've talked to several people that that happened to --
MR. PEELLE: Oh, it's very common, if you have a slow project.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: You can't do something big -- most people can't do something big in a short time. In fact, the first project I was on, we got the data for that spectrum of gamma rays from fission by about 1960 and had to pay for the international meeting in Vienna, but we never got the publication done. Funding was cut off for many people at the Labs the same time, actually, because of the demise of the aircraft nuclear propulsion program, which you've heard of. And of course, that was reasonable because the reason for having a nuclear reactor in an aircraft had to be pretty dire or you wouldn't even try. In the Navy, it would have worked, but it's a stretch. But we learned a lot in the process.
MR. MCDANIEL: And that was a huge project, wasn't it?
MR. PEELLE: Yes, many people got fired by governors who needed money.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: But many years later, I can't tell you when, maybe 1980, Los Alamos group came along and said, "Why didn't you guys finish?" And we told them why. They said, "Well, we can spare a few dollars to help you finish it up." So it got finished.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. PEELLE: And published properly.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: And, well, we fixed some of the answers, but we were about right in our first analysis.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, so you said you retired in ninety --
MR. PEELLE: One.
MR. MCDANIEL: '91. Because you were getting sick.
MR. PEELLE: Yes. My liver was giving up.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right. Now, I know you and your wife both were very active in the community. I mean --
MR. PEELLE: We didn't mention Elizabeth. I married her in 1955.
MR. MCDANIEL: I was going to ask -- I was going to get to that. So did you meet her here?
MR. PEELLE: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, so tell me about -- tell me -- so you came in '54. You met her here. Was she here working?
MR. PEELLE: No, she worked at K-25 in the lab.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh okay. Okay.
MR. PEELLE: And we had a mutual acquaintance, Joni Livingston, the wife of Bob Livingston, who was a Division Director in Physics or someplace at that time. So later we got married.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right. The -- but you and your wife were very active in the community. Were you -- you know, you were involved in politics; you were involved in social issues. I know that, and I want to talk about some of those things. But where did that come from? Was that something you were raised to do? Or --
MR. PEELLE: Oh, most surely. But, well, everybody knows that race relations were not all that great in the North, but they were a little calmer than this area.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: Oak Ridge had people from everywhere: North, South, East, West. But then the blacks who lived here in that 1954 era had very few privileges. They couldn't go to the movies, they couldn't wash their clothes at the laundromat. Most of them had a job, which had a long line to get out of the way within the working day. And most of the white people doing a similar occupation were concentrated in a different locker room and got out more quickly. There were just many things that weren't right. And we became aware of that through the church, through the fact that the Supreme Court was thinking about those things. And we helped form a group. Many groups were formed around. Ours was called the Oak Ridge Community Relations Council. And we, together with a few dozen others from the area, got to work on what we could do to eliminate those problems.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: In the meanwhile, the Clinton High School was burned down, there were riots over there, from an outside ass.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: If you wish. And so there was plenty to do. And our first big efforts were to call for the government to maintain law and order. Which, nowadays we'd sound real conservative and would've been then, but it was considered radical, I think that's fair to say, by some. Many people in Oak Ridge were not big haters of anybody. But there were a few who were happy with the way things were. And the -- at first, the administration of the compound, which was not quite out of government control yet --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. PEELLE: -- and they did integrate the high school. But not the junior high or anything else. Those came along a few years later. And we were in nine of the groups -- my wife and I were in nine of the groups that helped disaster. Dozens of people in town were working on this.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: But, so I played a minor role. And that was pretty interesting.
MR. MCDANIEL: But there were other --
MR. PEELLE: Oh yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- you know, there were other issues for integration, I mean, businesses and things such as that you and the group worked on --
MR. PEELLE: Well, we -- I remember one year, I was program chairman, and the topics were chosen from a list of problem areas in Oak Ridge. So every speaker who was invited should have known he represented a problem.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MR. PEELLE: Which was sort of mean. Some of them did very well, some of them exposed a problem.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. Exactly.
MR. PEELLE: But there was one step we had to learn. My wife got involved in developing a history of what was going on and for covering only a few years of this time, many of which we were not here. So she convened a series of meetings of people we knew had been involved in whatever was going on. And it also had a name; it was a subcommittee of the --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: And so every week we'd have a Garden Apartment, so-called, now Rolling Hills, full of all kinds of people we'd never met before. And they had wonderful stories. And as you know, the way this works, you get several people that were involved in something that trigger each other's memories so it comes pouring out. Whereas they wouldn't think of it by themselves. And -- so we did some history projects, and she had written that up and it's been at the library for a number of years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. Sure, sure. I was going to get to that.
MR. PEELLE: We got to -- from that, we got into Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning. They were going to build another road over the Smokies. And we thought that was -- if they built enough roads, they could totally destroy it. Because you can fill any number of roads on nice scenery like that. So a number of Oak Ridgers, dozens, got involved in the hearing on that and decided to form an organization, which is still active; it's been very important in the state.
MR. MCDANIEL: Let's go back to the race relations just a little bit.
MR. PEELLE: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: You were involved in the CRC Barbershop Committee.
MR. PEELLE: Yes, that was one committee.
MR. MCDANIEL: Tell me -- tell me about that. Tell me --
MR. PEELLE: Well, the problem was that if a black person, or a person thought to be black, needed a haircut, they had to go to Knoxville or learn to cut their own.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really?
MR. PEELLE: Most did the latter. But some went to Knoxville, and -- or cut each other's hair.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: So it was a hindrance.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: And would it be embarrassing if we had guests like that. So, to be sure we knew what we were doing, we had to go test. So several blacks and whites and in-betweens agreed to go in couples to all the barbershops to see what happened. And occasionally, somebody got their haircut. But mostly nobody did. And it wasn't they hadn't even asked about it, they usually said "We don't cut--"
MR. MCDANIEL: That's just the way it was.
MR. PEELLE: "We can't cut a black person's hair."
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: Well, maybe it took an hour to learn how, but they couldn't do it. And I went with a man who worked for the City and was the head custodian for what was then the Civic Center, called the -- had a green room and a small library, down in Jackson Square area. And he was a very refined person. Always neat as could be. He must have trimmed his hair twice a week. I mean, just personal attention, he was it. Mr. Bucker, who's long dead. So he and I went to a couple shops. And it was sort of interesting because it would be his turn, there's a bunch of people standing around, and he would walk up to the barber and say, "I just need a little trim over here." Nobody could see anything wrong with his hair, but he probably was ready to trim it. And they'd say, "No." I'd go up, we'd say "We're sorry. Thought there was a mistake." And we'd try other things, like leaving cards at various stores and laundromats saying, “We would support your allowing a range of customers.” So, eventually that led to a whole bunch of things. Beth was deeply involved in that. I was peripherally involved.
MR. MCDANIEL: But that led to bringing a black barber into town, wasn't it?
MR. PEELLE: No, but a man who was perfectly willing to cut black person's hair.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: And it was the brother of a woman who was part of the group --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. PEELLE: -- and Ken was it?
MR. MCDANIEL: Ken, Ken.
MR. PEELLE: Ken's Barbershop.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right.
MR. PEELLE: Ken is retired now.
MR. MCDANIEL: But they brought him in -- you brought him in with kind of a guarantee that he'd have so many months of business, right?
MR. PEELLE: We sold tickets ahead of time. So you could go in and -- once you had a ticket you could go in and get it whenever you wanted it, and how many tickets were sold I can't remember
ELIZABETH PEELLE: Two hundred seventy-five in one month.
MR. MCDANIEL: Two hundred and seventy-five in one month.
MR. PEELLE: Tickets? They could be used anytime.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. PEELLE: And some people bought ten, or whatever.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: So that introduced him a good start, a good place, and he has __ put on more barbers. Now, not many blacks came. They were all ___ because all the people who lived here had learned to cut their own hair already and were fine. But there were people, and there still are a few who go there. But we were sure pleased to see that problem reduced. The laundromat was a bigger problem.
MR. MCDANIEL: Was it?
MR. PEELLE: All this can be found various places, but that's not completely recorded. We were not involved as deeply as others. But the laundromat that was in above Jefferson Circle, which was convenient for many people, the guy really didn't like the idea of a black person's clothes being washed. And there's wonderful stories, some of which you've seen written down, but it's not in the library yet.
ELIZABETH PEELLE: *talking in background*
MR. PEELLE: Oh yeah, it ended up -- someone came in for a test and got their wash started. So the proprietor was so angry, he took all the clothes from everybody's washing machines.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. PEELLE: Everybody was there, and they weren't all black. Half and half. Threw them all out on the sidewalk.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. PEELLE: And they had to go sorting too. So that was a case of a bad reputation. Because that wasn't nice.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. I had heard once that that was where the Klan came from out in the County to come wash their robes at that --
MR. PEELLE: There was a Klan rally. I don't know where they were all from. Now, predominately not Oak Ridgers.
MR. MCDANIEL: But they -- right--
MR. PEELLE: And they had a rally one evening. I sat on the hill with my young daughter and Elizabeth -- my wife, Elizabeth, went down there looking around. There were a few, you know, Klan robes and things.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: I can't tell you what happened but, nothing -- I mean, there were speeches and stuff. And after an hour or two they went home. But it was not a violent thing in any way. But I'm sure the police were watching. In those days --
MR. MCDANIEL: Where was that held? Where were they?
MR. PEELLE: At the
ELIZABETH PEELLE: *talking in background* up Jefferson Street to the--
MR. PEELLE: It wasn't right in front. It was down the hill, wasn't it?
ELIZABETH PEELLE: We marched --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
ELIZABETH PEELLE: -- after talking with the police, we marched on one side of the road on the Turnpike up to the intersection and back. And the Klan was on the other side of the road.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. PEELLE: People expressed their opinions.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. PEELLE: It was taken care of.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, what are some of the other activities, social and political activities that you got involved with?
MR. PEELLE: Well, the main one is the involvement with Roane County politics.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Talk about that a little bit.
MR. PEELLE: In 1970, roughly, '69, this area -- I got the wrong date. This area where we're sitting, Oklahoma Avenue, was developed mostly in 1960. We moved here in '64 from the Garden Apartments. And there were several lots unbuilt. Nebraska Avenue area was also being built. So the population of Roane County Oak Ridgers went from two to a few hundred --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh okay.
MR. PEELLE: -- in a fairly short time. And for that reason, there was a -- there were several problems. These houses were appraised reasonably correctly for tax purposes. Whereas, most of the areas of the county, it was a hundred dollars an acre or something.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: Which seemed a little bit off. You couldn't buy that land for anything like that. And this was a general problem. Other new areas of the county were similar, but there weren't so many new areas. So it stuck like a sore thumb. Anyhow, this required the money that went to Roane County for schools from sales tax, for instance, had to be transferred to the City. The treasurer, or trustee, of Roane County refused. He said, "I'm not going to do that. They don't deserve it. It's only two million dollars, or whatever." And the City had this suit to get the money.
MR. MCDANIEL: The City of Oak Ridge?
MR. PEELLE: The City of Oak Ridge had a suit. And that got a lot of attention. And the appraisal problem got lots of attention. So we helped form a little group called Roane Ridgers, and we met at various places and tried to hear Roane County officials tell us why the appraisals had to be that way. Why, it was impossible. And the state was working on this problem elsewhere, not just here. And at about that time the first appraisal law was passed, which required an effort to get everything comparable and keep it up to date. It's still in effect. In fact, they've improved. Well, that got a lot of people in this area interested. At the same time, and for probably the same reason, in all of Roane County, Harriman, Rockwood, there was discontent with county government.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. PEELLE: Partly because it wasn't being done very well. The county judge was sick. He had once been - Frank Qualls, had once been a fine man apparently, but he had too much alcohol. And that was unpleasant. And so there was a county-wide organization, the name of which I do not recall, which said, "Let's get together and elect some commissioners who'll do something." At that time there was justices of peace, the same job, mostly the same job. Anyhow, they met to set the tax rate, so forth. So, in the effort to find candidates county-wide, there were a number of people in this group, which didn't really include me significantly at the beginning, but they looked around and they nabbed me and said, "Why don't you run for County Commissioner?" And at that point it was pretty interesting, so I said, "I can learn that."
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: I've got six months to learn it. And I did, went to meetings and I memorized -- the County was thinking about a new courthouse, and the architect, or the guy who had sold the idea, was a man named Martin Lyde. Now --
MR. MCDANIEL: Now what year -- now what year was that?
MR. PEELLE: Well, I think it was about 19 --
MR. MCDANIEL: Was it in the '60s?
MR. PEELLE: -- about 1970. I was first elected in '72.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. PEELLE: So it was just before I was elected. I started to follow it. And, well I thought it was a jail. He was going to build a jail. He don't want to build a courthouse. So it was probably '72. And Martin Lyde, who could draw a floor plan and did all this himself, he was in a meeting and there was a big discussion on the jail. And I learned a lot because I knew so little. I was standing next to him, so I had learned that he was the presumed architect. So I made the comment at break, "Well, it must take a lot of know-how to properly design a jail. No, no, no, you just..." And that's the kind of jail we had.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. Exactly.
MR. PEELLE: But he did get it done. And we had a good contractor who could correct the errors, so that the roof didn't fall in or anything. So anyhow, I got interested in the County. I ran for office. I think I knocked on every door of the precinct, which was only four hundred at that time. Now it would be harder. And had a large group of people helping me, one on every block. So it was actually -- I didn't know all these people, of course.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now was this -- you were elected by precinct and not at-large?
MR. PEELLE: The precinct.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, precinct.
MR. PEELLE: It turned out the precinct, at first, was the electoral district.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. PEELLE: It was the Sixth District, or something.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: So all the rest of the counties divided up into -- there were twenty-seven members.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. PEELLE: That was too many. But I was one of them. And the old courthouse with a big steel bar to keep the walls from falling in. You may remember that. We could hardly see each other, it was so big a room. But anyhow, that's where I started.
MR. MCDANIEL: That's where you started.
MR. PEELLE: And this went on for twenty-two years. But -- five elections. But they were not all contested; two of three of them were easy. And, but then there was a district that included Oliver Springs, Orchard View --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. PEELLE: -- and there were two and a fifteen member coalition. Fifteen is a good number. Not so small that somebody can get that low on the team and be the top all in one evening, not so large you can't even know the guys.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. PEELLE: So I worked with that, and after the first couple terms when people would speak to me and so forth, I had a really good time.
MR. MCDANIEL: You know, I guess from what I remember is that they kind of -- kind of considered you the outsider, didn't they?
MR. PEELLE: At first.
MR. MCDANIEL: At first?
MR. PEELLE: Very definitely.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah.
MR. PEELLE: Well it's this mentality where our treasurer, Roane County treasurer, wouldn't send money to Oak Ridge. So that's the only reason I didn't belong. I remember one guy who got mad at me for something, and said, "You ought to go back to your -- and get out of Roane County." But I lived in Roane County.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. As far as they were concerned, Roane County stopped at the river, wasn't it?
MR. PEELLE: Yes. And then -- so Oak Ridge piled on by annexing a little slip across the river, and it really got the County people upset. Because the hearing of whether that thing could be annexed was held in Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: And no Oak Ridger, at that time, lived there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. PEELLE: And several -- and nearby there were some nice people.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: And they were offended. And the City Manager at that time, I think, was Lyle Lacey. And I remember going down and I had to see him for something else. And I said, "Well, you know, this problem was made worse, this problem with neighbors working together, when we held the hearing in Oak Ridge for land across the river." And he said, "Oh." They pinned a little lower on his bulletin board over Roane County.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh really? What other things were you involved in, in activism --
MR. PEELLE: Well, Roane County was the big thing, until I got sick, really.
MR. MCDANIEL: Were there big issues that you faced there? I mean, were there big fights you had over -- between, you know, the Oak Ridge part of Roane County and the rest of the County?
MR. PEELLE: No. I could do nothing that benefitted only Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: But I could find lots of things that would help Oak Ridge, Harriman, Rockwood, etc.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Sure.
MR. PEELLE: And Kingston. So it was a very good group, we had a majority of people who were trying, and not all from the Lab. There were a few from the Lab who'd actively stand. And it was a very fine arrangement. One thing I learned, which I already could've guessed, from a County -- small County like this, fifty thousand or less people, it should be nonparty. Because I got most of the people on the Commission who were Republicans. And I was, at that time, on the Democratic executive committee. Not very active, but I was.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: And there was a lot of banter and they would kid me about things, but no problem at all working together. Because there was almost nothing that we dealt with that was really a partisan issue. And to inject caucus or something on top of that would have been nonsense. We got along fine. And in Knoxville, at that time, at least, they had a Democratic caucus, a Republican nonsense. Because you can go find the guy and talk to him. So I learned the value of nonparty politics. Most of the heads, people like the County executive and so forth that kept changing the names were Republicans, but that didn't matter. So we had a high presence. I just noticed in my follow-up, when I resigned, one of nice plaque signed by Ken Yager, who was the executive at that time, United States Senator. So it was a good group to work with, and we got a lot done. I'm not sure that that can be duplicated. As far as I was concerned, after the first few years I had no problems.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. PEELLE: And that doesn't mean there was no friction.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: But there was, I think, a real -- oh, I should say, we were two -- we had two commissioners. The other fella was Terry Hacker from Oliver Springs, who was a very well-known ___ throughout the County, and loved and regarded. So that made life easier. And he got more votes in Oak Ridge than I did one year. He came famed here.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. PEELLE: He was a really good guy, then died too young. So after the liver transplant, I feebly worked. Did my County job and voted that I never had the zip because I was in heavy therapy.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Now you said you had your liver transplant in --
MR. PEELLE: The transplant was in 1992.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, '92, right.
MR. PEELLE: Late '92. And until I worked as a consultant for 9 months, I was pretty healthy, until the last dropped down -- it's -- I was lucky to get out of it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: After that, after I recovered enough to do things, I got involved in the public oversight of what DOE was doing about reclamation in the area. And there were at least two or three organizations concerned with this. I was an early member of the so-called Site Specific Advisory Board, and chairman for a year, I think, Vice Chairman once. And we were new at it, and I think it's become more polished more recently. But one good thing we had, the state said, "We're trying to reclaim this area, or stabilize it, at least, from contamination. And it depends how you're going to use this land and what the public would accept. And we don't have any way of doing that." This was Mr. Lemming, who was the head of the state organization on Emory Valley Road. And we looked at each other and said, "Yeah, we ought to have one." So we had a group, they hired a Doug Sarno, nationally known, who was very good in the sense that he could hear a discussion and figure out what we meant to do, and find their words, and help write the report. And we performed what was called the End Use Committee and produced results, which, and the way we could do this at SSAB was they were helping support, which was a local committee, and some other groups. But each recommendation was just signed by whoever agreed.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. PEELLE: So here we had two dozen people meeting, usually a dozen guests, on television, and eight people would sign it. But nobody -- people could object. And once or twice they did. But not much. A number of people had hoped, and everyone would like it, but we had hoped to get a complete signed list, so then it was back to where it was.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: We were able to prove -- Al Brooks, who recently died, was a major factor there. We were able to prove that there's no way that anybody could afford that. That decision had been made by summing things up. Maybe there could have been more care. That's one big problem we had. There wasn't enough monitoring during the time it was being contaminated. But nevertheless, we could figure out how to make it useful for something and roughly what it would cost and what was worth doing. We made some judgments, which have pretty much stuck.
MR. MCDANIEL: Have they?
MR. PEELLE: They didn't disagree with -- "they" being DOE didn't badly disagree with it and they had some support, they didn't pour them down our throats, they indicated options. But usually the complete clean out and vegetation perfectly, it's just basically impossible. But we could have the top ten feet okay. And you could -- or some cases, you can work here and play here, as long as it's only ten hours a week.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: One of the things that still bother me is various land classifications. Clean, contaminated. And then there are some others including recreational use, which sounds like it's a good place to play. Well, maybe it is, but what that really means is you should only spend so many hours a week using it. Which is a serious mildly restricted area. And you probably shouldn't sit on the ground to have a picnic.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. PEELLE: But because when they -- the hot spots turned out are sometimes -- this room has got some hot spots. Here's clean, there's dirty --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. PEELLE: -- there's a spot. Yeah. People just built some stuff.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. PEELLE: So a lot of going over all these areas, and that was a hard and useful job.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. PEELLE: That led into a stewardship committee, which is just as hard. Which produced a couple reports, which I think -- I hope are still being used. When this place is made usable as it can, there's still going to be a problem of keeping track. And who is going to be here to keep track? DOE may not be here. And so you've got to have records. Well, I think we succeeded, mostly because of the efforts of Al Brooks to get the tax -- the property appraiser’s maps to show areas that are contaminated. Now they're not publicly owned. But in two days, this area can be given to some organization.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MR. PEELLE: It happens around here.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: Things happen quickly --
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MR. PEELLE: -- when the Congress considers them. So there have to be records that are not in the courthouse or the DOE. And there are examples a lot, for instance, where was it? One of the big areas out west, Rocky Flats, they finished that job pretty well. And they put all the records in a boxcar and sent them to Pittsburgh or someplace, where you can't find what you want. So people who live around there --
MR. MCDANIEL: They can't find it.
MR. PEELLE: -- they can find the old records to the extent that people have been working on this for years, but details are lost.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: Now there, it may be simpler, the area that was contaminated is probably known. But, so that's the stewardship problem. Right now it's okay, but as long as we've got a project going, somebody can know what's going on. Every year they put out a report that says where we are, and it's a pretty good report usually. Excellent. The guy who does that is skilled. But when they have to leave, will we know enough? Will Oak Ridge know enough?
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. PEELLE: And if it becomes a private industry, will they remember that they're not supposed to go more than ten feet deep.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. Exactly.
MR. PEELLE: And they won't see anything. So there's a danger. And we did not, as far as I know, since I haven't been active for a few years, I think the efforts of stewardship have now assured that the agreements under which land is released make it very clear what has to happen.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. PEELLE: And the information is available, but there's not a mandatory --
MR. MCDANIEL: There's not a -- there's not really an oversight --
MR. PEELLE: Not a strong one.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. PEELLE: Now, the state could go look at it and start over again, but it's -- and of course, we have our own state office now, full life of the project. So fifty years down the line, it'll be nice if people, when they get a deed, know what they have to do. Stay away from that corner, don't dig there, don't use well water, etcetera.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. PEELLE: And it's worked on, but it's hard to get people to agree to do anything forever. And eventually this thing will be done by the County or something. So it's got to be -- the big points have to be known. So that -- during the time I was on the commission, since most of this stuff is in Roane County, I took it as part of my job to watch over these things. So after there was a public meeting on something with two people present, I was probably one of them. And I would -- if nobody else did it, I would write up a comment. But, and that was a lot of work, but I did -- I continued that part of it when I was no longer the representative. And that's how I got into this and stayed there, until a few years ago, got too hard. But there still is a group, I believe, and they still do good stuff. One of the good things they do is very successful, I think, making education packets. So it's easy for a high school teacher to put a unit in the curriculum.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MR. PEELLE: And stuff's all ready. And where are they going to get this box dropped on them with all the stuff they need? And that's a potentially very good thing. This'll never work unless a few people in town know about it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Exactly.
MR. PEELLE: So that's most of my life, except working. And I worked a lot.
MR. MCDANIEL: What -- yeah, what were, and I'm sure you talked about this, but what -- if you had to pick out two or three really highlights of your life in Oak Ridge, what would those be?
MR. PEELLE: Well, it's spread over twenty years, but the Roane County thing is probably the biggest. And the --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. That was the thing you were most invested in, wasn't it? As far as for the community goes.
MR. PEELLE: Well, it -- the pleasure was deeper, perhaps, because we could see that what we were doing did actually help people. And people -- I got very little bitterness.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really?
MR. PEELLE: And very little people who don't like politicians, they treated me very well. I remember one fellow out in the v=county who I met, actually at a garden meeting, a club, which meant a flower club, which met in Dyllis area to keep track of who's in the hospital and send flowers. Well I was invited to one of their picnics and sat down next to a lady who'd come from Texas and lived near Dyllis school. And she was complaining about the tax rate. "Oh, the taxes are terrible here. Blah, blah, blah." She was from Texas and things were different where she was. At the end, she said, "My daughter graduated from high school this year," she said with a smile. And she said, "Well, I hope she got a good education." I said, "You know, those are linked. The tax problem and the good education." She said, "Yes, I know."
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
MR. PEELLE: So, she was calm about it. And she understood.
MR. MCDANIEL: She understood. She just wanted to complain about it a little bit, didn't she?
MR. PEELLE: This district, including Oliver Springs, was easier. They did not complain about educational expenses. Even the areas where there weren't many educated people wanted it to be a better education. I'm not sure that's true over the County, although in other places as well. Kingston has a lot of people like that. But when we had a town meeting, so to speak, what did we want to do about fixing up schools? Do we want to close Oliver Springs, everybody go to Kingston?
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: There's always a big push for a consolidated high school, because you can imagine this huge thing with four thousand students and you can have courses on underwater basket weaving or whatever, because there's so many students. But the problem is that if you had to go travel from Kingston -- Oliver Springs to Kingston and home every day, A. you spend a lot of time on the bus, and B. there is absolutely no community involvement.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Exactly.
MR. PEELLE: And Oliver Springs had pretty high community involvement. In fact, you've over there on a summer morning, at least when I did a few times to see somebody, the area of the high school was covered with people: kids practicing, playing ball, people practicing band, all sorts of things.
MR. MCDANIEL: We're about through.
MR. PEELLE: So, it was a center of activity.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: And that's an important function, in a small town especially.
MR. MCDANIEL: And you know, I guess a lot of these little high schools have produced some folks. I just saw -- I remember I was reading an article the other day about Nancy -- Nancy Ann--
MR. PEELLE: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, yeah.
MR. PEELLE: Yeah, she's been a winner all her life.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, yeah. She graduated from Rockwood.
MR. PEELLE: From Rockwood and UT.
MR. MCDANIEL: Went to Roane -- yeah.
MR. PEELLE: And with as high honors as they have.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. PEELLE: It helped better than on TennCare. Helped Obama on ObamaCare. And I hate to see her leave. I always had fun with our representatives looking forward to the letter. If you are confused about how this will affect our area, call Nancy Ann. Who I barely know, I met her. Because she knows the answer.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MR. PEELLE: And that proves that if you work at it and are skilled enough, you can go to school anywhere. But it's easier if you have a good school.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
MR. PEELLE: The Rockwood School was not the greatest. But she learned.
MR. MCDANIEL: She learned. She did. Well, Bob, I appreciate you taking -- well, the phone rang. I appreciate you taking time to talk with us. Is there anything else you want to talk about?
MR. PEELLE: No. It's a fine place to live, though.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you so much, I appreciate it.
MR. PEELLE: Good to have you.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. Great. That was great.
[END OF INTERVIEW]